“Thank you,” she says, looking pleased.
“Do you do your own makeup?” I ask her.
“I do. Takes more than two hours to paint this mug.”
“I wish I could do that.”
Kai looks up from his spot crouched over the open suitcases of supplies we carried in and says, “Renee’s a beauty blogger. Teach her all you know, guys.”
“Ugh,” someone groans. “Why did you bring her on Western Night? It’s the shittiest.”
“Speak for yourself,” someone else calls out. “I look fucking fabulous. Ride-able, if I do say so myself.”
A door to the room opens and a voice calls out, “Forty-five minutes to showtime, ladies!”
The room erupts into chaos then.
“I need some goddamned pantyhose!”
“Fucking razor burn!”
“I need someone to sew me into this gown real quick.”
“Make yourself useful,” Kai says to me, winking.
I nod and spring into action, doing what I can. It doesn’t feel like much—I deliver makeup samples from Kai’s case to anyone who wants to try them, help zip boots and blot shiny faces. Some queens who are ready can’t lift drinks to their mouths due to wearing super long nails, so I carefully lift straws to their lips.
“You’re too pretty to be real,” a queen says to me, tilting my jaw upward to get a better look.
I laugh as Kai says, “Show them a picture of Jonah!”
“Girl, who’s Jonah?” someone asks as several queens cluster around me.
“Her boyfriend,” Kai says. “He’s a professional hockey player, and I want to lick him, just sayin’.”
I could show the queens a picture of me and Jonah on the Ferris wheel, looking like an average, happy couple. But something in me scrolls past those and finds one I snagged online and saved to my phone.
Jonah was posing for a magazine photographer who did a series on athlete’s bodies. He’s naked in the photo, his full sleeve tattoo on one side on display and nothing but his hand covering his crotch in the bottom of the frame. He looks intense as he leans on the top of his stick, his blue eyes piercing.
“Fuck me, he’s hot,” someone mutters as the group erupts into hoots and hollers.
“Girl, that’s your man?! You are one lucky bitch!”
“He needs to move his hand out of the way!”
“How big is his stick, Renee? Don’t hold out on us.”
“I’ll take a lick of that any day.”
Laughing, I put my phone away as a waitress in tiny cutoff jean shorts and a cropped blouse tied beneath her breasts approaches with a large tray full of shots.
Dee passes me a glass, and others grab until the tray is almost empty.
“Everyone got one?” Dee asks, looking around the room.
“Aya needs one,” someone says.
Kai grabs another glass from the tray and it gets passed back until everyone has a shot in their hand.
“We always do Fireball before Western Night,” Dee tells me, winking. She looks out at the group of queens and says, “Slay hard tonight, dolls!”
Glasses click and groans sound as the shot goes down. The liquid is hot on my throat; I haven’t had Fireball in years.
“Fucking awful,” Kai says, shaking his head as he puts his empty glass on the tray.
“We’re going clubbing after this, and you’re coming with us,” Dee says to Kai before turning to me. “You too, Renee.”
I nod half-heartedly. I think clubbing with this group sounds like a blast, but I can’t go. That one shot was all the alcohol I can drink tonight, because I’m very careful when I’m on assignment. Anything that impairs my judgment could let something slip out of my mouth that shouldn’t.
Kai and I slip out of the dressing room and out to the main bar area, which is filled with people in chairs turned toward the stage. Kai leads me toward two chairs off to the side with Reserved signs, which he takes off so we can sit down.
The first queen takes the stage and sings a Dolly Parton song. The crowd loves every note, clapping enthusiastically at the end. The next song is a parody performance of “Low Places” that leaves everyone in stitches.
Some performances are better than others. It’s clear that country western isn’t the first choice for some of them, or even the second. But every one of them has fun. I think I smile through the entire show, the confidence and fun-loving mood of the queens contagious.
One guy yells out a shitty comment during a performance, and the crowd boos until he’s kicked out of the club. Dee blows the crowd away by line dancing very well in those high heeled boots, and another queen sits on a stool and sings an original folk song that leaves the crowd silently mesmerized until the end, when they give a standing ovation.
I stick to water and bar food, but Kai is getting loopy from all the martinis he’s been drinking. When the performance is over, I pay our check and grab my bag, saying, “I’ll call for a ride.”
“I’m going out,” Kai says, slurring the words.
I hold back the comment I want to make about him being too drunk, not wanting to offend him.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” I ask instead.
“I’m up to it.” He pops his lips after each word, and I shake my head.
“Kai, I can’t go out. Let’s go home and watch a movie.”
He stops our waitress and asks for another drink. She gives me an inquiring look and I shake my head. Kai doesn’t even notice.
“Please come home with me,” I say. “I’ll worry about you if you don’t. And we have all your supplies to get home.”
“Fuck it,” he says, waving a hand. “I don’t need any of that stuff. I do need a night of fun!”
“Suit yourself,” I say. “But call me if you need me, okay?”
“I won’t need you. Bye, my little square roomie!”
While I wait for my Uber to pull up outside, I post a photo of me, Kai and all the queens taken backstage before the show on my Renee Carlisle IG. Kai told me to embellish and say “we” helped the queens get prepped for the night, when really it was all him. I was nothing but an errand girl. It does add cred to the IG account of my undercover identity, though.
This is the first night in a while that I haven’t been either out with Jonah or hanging at home with Kai because Jonah was on the road. It was surprisingly fun. The more I get to know Chicago and its people, the more I like it.
I have the sense that Jonah needs some space. He’s been spending all his off nights with me, and I never considered him being tired of it until I woke up in his place alone the other day. He has to act like a man falling hard for me, when in reality he’s given up most of his free time to fake date me for the Shields case.
The media scrutiny on him is intense. Photographers follow him everywhere, and in interviews he’s asked about me before hockey, every single time. He didn’t ask for any of this, but he never complains. When the news hits that he’s still eligible, and that he was helping bring down a child predator, Jonah may need security guards to fight off the women trying to get with him.
Thinking about it sparks a little flare of jealousy as I slide into my Uber. I showed the queens that picture of Jonah because I’m proud he’s my boyfriend. At least, I would be, if he actually was. Jonah’s a good man, and he’s a lot more than his looks. I don’t know why my first impression of him as pretty was so off.